One of the things that's keeping liberal democracy safe is the inefficiencies of governments and businesses, with "not invented here" being one of the biggest ones. What makes Palantir scary is not necessarily that they work with ICE but that they're probably delivering something that adds value.
As we get better at machine learning and data engineering, these solutions will not only get much more powerful but also plug and play. That's what I'm really afraid of, at that point they can be rolled out over night.
Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#12> we have the capacities to centralize this data but we also have the technical capacities to descentralize it (federate it?) interestingly enough, it is getting more centralized. Is this due to economic incentives?
Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from socia…
I think there's also a cultural shift underway.
> a new economic model based on social behavior.
this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#13That sounds a lot like claiming planned economies will obsolete capitalism once they solve the valuation problem. Only this time they have that precedent and fail to address it.
Propaganda has always had large societal influence and I am not denying that better data could in theory be used to make it worse. But just as in practice targetted advertising works about as well as trying to seduce someone with information gathered by digging through their garbage practice seems highly dubious.
Dictatorships are kind of dysfunctional shitholes because the concern is holding onto power for the few over advancement for many as loyalty trumps competence. The succession lines are intentionally horrible just toand vagur just to reduce odds of assassination. Overcoming that with "data" isn't even a plan - especially since the dystopian vague data tools can be jacked or dismantled by the successors.
Not to mention the arguement ad inevitability. Disclaimer - not having read beyond the initial pitch page: To be frank this seems like an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist to sell alarmist books on topics they know little about that will have less shelf life than Y2K books in 1999. Not exactly the best impression.
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from socia…
I think there's also a cultural shift underway. > a new economic model based on social behavior. this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.
Right, and the shift gets even deeper.
Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.)
Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt Systems--are going to be "the new money."
Lots of people talk about the data economy and the fact that we need a way to put a dollar value on information.
And what we're seeing with social credit systems is that that value is not 'on' information. It's 'in' information. And that's creating a new economic logic we're not able even to conceive yet
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's also a cultural shift underway. > a new economic model based on social behavior. this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.
Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.) Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt…
I'm not sure they are separable, certainly paper money (and pre-money forms such as hansatsu) are created by issuing a debt, but they were created for the very pragmatic need of bartering without carrying a bunch of gold or rice around.
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#16i was born in a communist country and lived thru the downfall of the USSR. the level of censorship and control that we have now is nothing compared to what the soviets were doing. that's why my impression of the paper is very negative. we're the generation that has the most access to information in history, we can travel like no other human generation travelled in history. and we have so much money and access that ob…
in order to picture what is coming (I think it'll have get worse before there's any real pushback) imagine that "evil soviets" from the USSR had the today's internet at their disposal.
Why are the "evil soviets" or "evil whoever" the only ones who have the internet at their disposal in these thought experiments? What about the good guys? Where are the John Adams and Lincoln's and Gandhi's? Are they on vacation?
Invoking fear and doubt in people's heads doesn't produce imagination, curiosity or empathy. And those are the tools that produce new solutions. What fear and doubt produces is defensiveness and mindless reactions.
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.) Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt…
I'm not sure they are separable, certainly paper money (and pre-money forms such as hansatsu) are created by issuing a debt, but they were created for the very pragmatic need of bartering without carrying a bunch of gold or rice around.
That's what common sense says. But there's no proof that that ever happened. I recommend you to check out Graeber's book. Or you can read my whole explanation in the fourth section of Data Dictatorships.
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#18By the way, in the website there are links to download for free the book Data Dictatorships.
Do you have a summary of your conclusions (for those of us who haven't read it already)? Are we doomed, or is there a bright light?
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#19By the way, in the website there are links to download for free the book Data Dictatorships.
Do you have a summary of your conclusions (for those of us who haven't read it already)? Are we doomed, or is there a bright light?
The problem with summaries and TL;DRs is that they don't allow you to start a conversation. So I can't provide you with a short answer because everybody is going to interpret it with their own filter.
That's exactly why I wrote the book. You can't change people with a tweet. Sometimes not even through an article. But that's the magic of books.
Is it all gloom and doom? That depends on how we react. But I have the feeling that if we don't spend some time thinking about these issues--collectively--then it'll be gloom and doom for sure.
Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
#20> we have the capacities to centralize this data but we also have the technical capacities to descentralize it (federate it?) interestingly enough, it is getting more centralized. Is this due to economic incentives?
The trend for consumer is a push towards centralization, mostly for convenience reasons. So far it has been hard to reconcile an open communication model with saftety from the many forms of abuse—ranging from illegal actors to permissible (yet highly annoying) advertisers.
I got on the internet in the 90's back when netiquette was still a thing. Nowadays, most things are all about money: either how can a closed platform get monetized or how to game any communication method for personal enrichment. I often reminisce on the polite and open internet of the past, but that is no longer the reality available to us.
Interstingly enough, for enterprise, the trend seems to be in the opposite direction. I work on Webex Teams and one of the features is clients owning their own decryption hardware, running on their own servers. Cisco may be the one moving the messages around but we have no clue what's inside of those messages (and we certainly don't want to know).
In this federated model, 2 separate companies can communicate, relying on key management running under their own control, each applying their own retention policies, etc. Of course these systems are a lot more complex than the naive "big store of data + 1 gatekeeper" approach.